BOSTON — Lilies of the valley pushing through the dirt in my friend’s yard in Cambridge seem unmoved by the fact that a man carjacked by the alleged Boston Marathon bombers escaped them a few blocks away.

Along the Charles River, near where a university police officer was killed in a storm of bullets, clouds of snow-white crab apple and dogwood blooms punctuate the allée of ancient sycamore trees sheltering weekend runners who will not be stopped.

In the hilly Watertown neighborhood where one of the bombing suspects hid in a trailered boat, hostas are unfurling, ignorant of fluttering police tape that blocks the street.

Downtown, along Boylston Street, a garden of collective mourning has sprung up. Four white crosses bearing the names of the dead anchor hills of notes and candles and flowers. Paper peace cranes bloom from the branches of trees. Visitors read affirmations scrawled on the Niketown store.

Some stop and weep, their tears falling to the sidewalk near drifts of tulips standing guard in the Old South Church yard, cups open wide to the sun, singing the undaunted, full-throated song of spring.

The business business editor of The Denver Post and a Colorado native, Dana Coffield has worked at news organizations of all sizes, including the Rocky Mountain News, the Associated Press bureaus in Denver and Cheyenne, weekly general interest and business publications in Boulder and Larimer counties and at the Daily Times-Call in Longmont. She has also worked as a business editor at technology and natural products trade magazines.